I Will Tell You A Story You Can't Refuse

A Homage To Calvino, Or Somesuch


So, a man enters a bar. (No, it's not that kind of — no, let me finish — it's not a joke story.) He's quite tall, wears a black leather jacket, looks agitated, and the first thing he does is turn to another patron (a stout man in a teal top hat and matching suit, God knows who came up with that one) and say: »I met the Reader today. An hour or so ago. Out on the street. We have a serious problem.« The reason he speaks in these short puffs of sentence is that he is winded from running.
»Serious how?« rejoins Teal Hat (?!? Jeez! You ought to take a tire iron to the Writer). »Uh, I mean, how serious?«
»Our entire universe may cave in, serious.«
»Oh. That is problematic. Specify!« Teal hat? TEAL?
»He's thinking of writing on his own.«
»Oh dear. That—«
»And he's sitting over there now.« They evince no real astonishment. »He's thinking about how ridiculous your suit is, see?«
»Hey! What's wrong with my attire?«
»It makes him want to change stuff, to go editorial, and what's worse, to leave and write his own, better stuff. It makes him think he can easily be a Writer himself.«

You sigh, you crumple the paper into a small ball, you knead it into a kind of little rocket with your fingertips, and into the trashcan it goes with fifty-eight others. This is why proofreading is necessary, you reflect as you pull the next piece of halfway scribble-covered paper from off the pile.

Teal? What can you have been thinking?